Foos Paradise

At the World Graphic Design Foosball Championship in New York, there are three golden rules, the most golden of which is, “No spinning the rods!” For the past three years, the design firms KarlssonWilker (which created our Transparency section, page 25) and the Office of Paul Sahre (frequent contributor to The New York Times op-ed page) have hosted this annual event, in which 50 graphic design-companies from as far away as Iceland send two-person teams to represent their studio in a double-elimination foosball tournament. The prize: a coveted trophy topped with a one-legged soccer player, and a year’s worth of gloating.

During last year’s epic WGDFC finals, onlookers drank beer as a team from Doyle Partners (the designers of Spy magazine’s first issues) defeated the 2004 champion team KarlssonWilker (who had bested the previous year’s winner, OOPS, in the semifinals). Chuck Robertson, a member of the championship team, said that he and his partner Martin Islet were “proud to have vanquished the irascible legions of the New York design/foosball community. We salute the heroism and poise of our opponents on and off the smoking battlefields.” He meant that literally—during the match, someone had set off a bottle rocket.

MORE INFO wgdfc.org

THREE GOLDEN RULES 

1. First team to five goals wins.

2. If a ball goes in the goal legally, it is a point, no matter who hit it.

3. No spinning the rods!